Hey all! Scott here. The only true way to know if you're tough s**t, is if you got a Wii Remote holder for free for buying hundreds of dollars worth of Nintendo games and systems. That's a big f**k you to anybody who doubted me buying a Wii U. Club Nintendo was one of the only cults I was in that offered 3DS XL charging cradles, they were the best. When you have a brand that does beloved as Nintendo, you should do something in favor of the fans every now and then, before they remember "This was the company that sold us Odama" Enter Club Nintendo, a loyalty rewards program for Nintendo fans. You buy games, you get points for them, and you could save up a bunch of points to exchange for amazing prizes... if you were in Europe or Japan, in North America you could exchange them for notebooks. North America's Club Nintendo was flooded with folders and shoelaces. To be fair, we got some good prizes from time to time over here. But I was always looking outside seeing all the Europeans and Japanese having that time of their lives, redeeming their points to get an actual Mario Kart trophy, come on. Club Nintendo technically first started exclusively in Europe back in 2002, initially named Nintendo VIP 24/7, but it really wasn't like the Club Nintendo we know of today. It was basically a site for European fans to flock to for exclusive updates on some Nintendo games. In North America we had something called My Nintendo beforehand, Which let you register your games with a specific code where you could get screensavers and stuff, sign me up. Japan was the first country to get the true Club Nintendo in 2003 with Europe officially restructuring and renaming Nintendo VIP into Club Nintendo in 2006 with North America finally getting the rewards program themselves in 2008. So this is how Club Nintendo worked, you buy a new Nintendo first party title, you cracked that sucker open and you're greeted to an invite. Join the club. Own a bag. You take your unique code of the game, which you'd rather die than show anyone else, Log on to Club Nintendo, sign in to your profile, and enter the code to register your software. You take a little survey about why you bought the game, and then receive some virtual coins, Usually the amount was in line with how much the game cost in dollars, So for example since Wii games will generally retail for 50 bucks, You'd usually get 50 coins for them. When you bought a new Nintendo system? Oh man, that gave you coins in the triple digits most of the time! That was where the money was, I mean I deserve it for buying this. If you connected your systems to Club Nintendo through the digital shops, you would automatically get coins for digital purchases, and I also believe some very specific physical third-party software came with Club Nintendo codes, but that happened far from often. After registering the game, there'd be a chance to get about 10 extra coins if you took another survey after playing it, and giving your thoughts on the product. I know there are a lot of people who would just get on a Club Nintendo survey and do the unthinkable. *loud keysmashing* A lot of users didn't care about giving true wholehearted feedback on games, and just wrote gibberish to get through the dozen or so questions these surveys would ask. I personally didn't feel right doing that and actually gave real answers on Club Nintendo. But sometimes I get pretty lazy and just write the bare minimum. What did you think about this game? It's pretty good Why did you buy this game? It's pretty good Where did you buy this game? It's pretty good A lot of people gave the surveys flak just because they did take a good couple of minutes to get through, couple that with the fact the Club Nintendo website itself was painfully slow, and yeah, I can see why people didn't take these surveys seriously. But who knows, maybe the people writing gibberish and not giving pure feedback was a reason Nintendo said: "Alright, nobody cares, we can release THAT." I never really complained too much about the surveys because they gave you coins and return for completing them. Yes, Nintendo gives us something in return for taking time out of our day to talk about a product we care enough to register on abstinence dot org, but of course if people can take advantage of an already free service, They will. To be fair though, you'd get these surveys for any of the eShop games you downloaded, and how much feedback can I really give on Donkey Kong 3? Another way you could fool Nintendo was by buying unused Club Nintendo codes off of eBay or something to get coins for a game you didn't buy. Or you could just walk into GameStop, open up a game, take a picture of the Club Nintendo code and walk out. Eight years ago, I did that once with Metroid Other M, I don't know what came over me. Now the coins you accumulated could be used to redeem a wealth of fun rewards they had in stock, I mean that was the entire point of doing all this, you take the Mario handbags out of the picture, I refuse to buy games. After seeing the Club Nintendo propaganda in so many of the games I bought for a few years, I finally decided, enough was enough. See, a lot of people join fraternities, I joined Club Nintendo in 2011 I liked the fact that I was tardy to the party because that meant I had a lot of games to redeem right off the bat, so I was just swimming coins at the start. Now the rewards they had available changed all the time, with certain prizes being available for a limited time and then going away forever, while others were consistently available only sometimes going out of stock. The colored 3DS XL charging cradles? Those went out of stock before Nintendo even thought about making them, but don't worry, You could always buy the Kirby patches! Now, because of the limited stock of prizes, and joining later in the site's life, I definitely did miss out on rewards were only available pre-2011, which really stunk. But after actually looking back at all the physical rewards I got, I'm fairly content with what I chose to redeem. One of the first things I used my sweet sweet coins on was this Wii Remote Holder. Yes, I looked at all of this and said f**k these my Wii Remotes need a box This is just a simple collapsible holder for the controllers I use this for all kinds of remotes and lighters. I thought it was so adequate at holding, I got the other color which after saying that , I should've brought that little factoid about myself to the grave! One could argue, I didn't need this, but more could argue, I didn't need two. Game & Watch Collection for the DS was only available via Club Nintendo, and it was one of the most expensive rewards, 800 coins to redeem this one. But the idea of getting a new, physical game exclusive to Club Nintendo, was just too cool to pass up. This was the second reward I redeemed after the first Wii Remote holder, and I will maintain it, This is a neat reward, a cute little collection of retro LCD Game & Watch games But it wasn't the greatest investment back then. I mean in my opinion you could use those 800 coins to buy other things, like two Wii Remote holders. Game & Watch collection only includes three Game & Watch games. Now, to be fair, these are three games that use two screens So they were a perfect fit for a collection on the DS Nintendo's done Game & Watch collections before the DS, but these featured the original versions of the games, plus modern remakes of them as well. Game & Watch Collection features the least amount of games out of all of these compilations, and it's just the originals, no extra pizazz. So while it was still a cool reward, it's not the most enjoyable or interesting thing to be honest. You could have picked up Game & Watch collection 2, but I never did. I actually traded this into GameStop one day just because I really needed $3.00. One of my favorite rewards I picked up was this history of handhelds card set. This was a set of post cards which featured art of Nintendo's major handheld systems, with little bullet points included. They cover a good chunk of them, but some aren't included, anything released after 2011, and stuff like the Game Boy Light and Pokemon Mini aren't here. But that shouldn't detract from this being just a high quality set of cards, celebrating the history of Nintendo's handhelds. It's legitimately fun to go through, It really makes me want a Nintendo published coffee table book of their entire history. I picked up two 3DS game card cases, and these actually came with multiple inserts with different art and themes. The Majora's Mask puzzle, I got this because I thought it would come in a nice cardboard box, Beep beep, disappointment coming through! and of course later on, Club Nintendo start to offer digital games. Every month, they offered a new slate of releases you could redeem coins for. I picked up Fluidity on WiiWare, PiCTOBiTS on DSi, lots of other stuff, and buy other stuff, I mean, of course I got Grill-Off with Ultra Hand. Come on, I'm only human. This was a Club Nintendo exclusive downloadable game Wii game, that was based around the Ultra Hand, one of the most popular toys Nintendo made when they were primarily a toy company. It was 80 coins, which meant pretty much anybody could afford it, even if you didn't want it, you probably had like 100 coins left on your account, and the only things you could get were either Grill-Off with Ultra Hand or an Other M screensaver. And I mean, come on It's a Club Nintendo exclusive game. Just download it. Grill-Off was an arcade style, go for the high score type game, but that didn't excuse it from bad! It wasn't that great, but it was cool as a Club Nintendo exclusive. Now for every reward I got in Club Nintendo, there are about 10 rewards either I couldn't get, because they went of stock a split second after I saw them, or they were too expensive, and then there were the rewards you couldn't pay me to redeem. 10 coins for screen savers. Of course no. Mario and Nintendogs greeting cards, the only way to respond to getting drafted. The folder and notebook combo, pen cases, a handful of the rewards just never appealed to me. I felt like I could get all of these types of things at Target for like, five bucks. And honestly a lot of my time with Club Nintendo was spent not redeeming my coins on stuff like that. I'd wait and wait and wait to spend my coins a much more interesting things. I would check the site once a week or so, and say No. There were a lot of items that came out that I always wanted, yet were too expensive at the time. Game & Watch Ball, a full reproduction unit of the first Game & Watch ever released. Now this was the kind of thing I wanted from a Club Nintendo prize. Something that really wouldn't make much sense at major retailers, something that really only big Nintendo fans would appreciate. So it only made sense to be available via Club Nintendo, and made the program way cooler because of it. It's awesome to not only have a Game & Watch Ball unit, but one that is brand new, not used or refurbished. It was 1200 coins, so I had to make a choice between this and Game & Watch Collection and I made the wrong decision initially.. A fully featured Game & Watch is way cooler than the DS collection. I ended up just buying this one off eBay. A giant AR card, Remember those AR cards that came with every 3DS. Nintendo kept cost-cutting and removed tons of random things from 3DS bundles year after year, but refused to get rid of the AR cards. You can't have a 3DS without the AR cards. They were kinda cute, I guess, but how about one the size of a large newborn? This was always when I was thinking "Yeah if I have like 200 coins burning a hole in my pocket, and there's nothing else I want, I might go for it." But that never happened. I don't believe there were any differences between this and the standard Mario AR card, it was just, bigger. Posters sets, t-shirts, original DS game card cases, fans, Wii Remote straps, playing cards, hanafuda cards, pouches for the DS and 3DS based on Zelda, Animal Crossing, the Club Nintendo Logo, plus a Luigi variant as well. There were so many fun little things that made available through this program, but easily the coolest things they offered with the Gold and Platinum rewards each and every year. If you gained a certain amount of coins over a year, you'd be eligible for either Gold or Platinum status. Allowing you to redeem one exclusive Gold or Platinum reward for free. In 2009, if you reached Gold status, you could redeem a callender, f**king woo. But, if you reached platinum status, you could choose between a Mario hat, or Doc Louis' Punch-Out!! A downloadable Club Nintendo exclusive Wii game. It was just a quick Punch-Out match against Doc Louis based on Punch-Out Wii. Nothing crazy. You could beat it in like 10 minutes, but an awesome little mini game for Punch-Out fans, and a cool reward. 2010 Gold members could redeem a calendar, f**king woo. Platinum members could get a Mario figurine. This was kind of the most iconic Club Nintendo reward, the one you would always see on the bookshelf of that one guy that was always better than you. 2011, yep. Platinum reward was this Mario pin set, now, I bought this secondhand, It's okay. 2012 was the first year I was able to redeem Platinum or Gold prizes. I qualified for Platinum so had the choice between playing cards or a poster set, and I wen with the posters. In hindsight I think I should have gone with the cards. I'm not the biggest poster guy, so not sure why I chose that, but these are incredibly high quality prints. The Gold prizes included another calendar, but you could choose from a variety of downloadable games as well, which was a nice option. 2013, Platinum rewards we're a poster set and Majora's Mask soundtrack, you bet I got the soundtrack, still sealed too. This was weird because Club Nintendo offered an Ocarina of Time 3D soundtrack, and they put out this Majora's Mask one before Majora's Mask 3D was announced. Again the Gold rewards were a calendar or different digital games, but then 2014 came around and the beginning of the end starting to become evident. No physical rewards for either Platinum or Gold members, instead, you could choose from a bunch of digital games with Platinum members being offered beefier games like Game & Wario, which is what I chose. This was pretty disappointing because a lot of the Club Nintendo members including myself, already had a lot of the games they were offering so it was kind of like, "Well, I really want Game & Wario but it's the only one I don't have." Now the ups and downs of the North American Club Nintendo were almost non-existent in other countries. Europe and Japan seem to more so use club nintendo as a way to reward passionate fans with products that were too specific and niche to be sold at major retailers. I have a few Japanese Club Nintendo rewards I've bought over the years and they're the sole reason North Americans cry. A Wii Remote styled TV remote. This doesn't actually work with the Wii, it's just a Japanese TV remote that uses a Wii Remote shell. That's still awesome. A golden Wii Wheel, comes with packaging and everything They would still do packaging for all these products, as if they were retail products, like this gold Nunchuck. In North America, we got the gold Nunchuck on Club Nintendo, but it just came in a plastic bag in the mail. A Super Famicom Classic Controller for the Wii. This is a full reproduction of the Super Famicom controller, but it plugs into your Wii Remote, and you can use it with virtual console games. This isn't nearly as special now because you can do this with the SNES classic edition controllers, but this was the first time Nintendo did something like this, and the box art is awesome. Specific games were released exclusively via Club Nintendo, like Tingle's Balloon Fight. Yep. That is a Tingle Balloon Fight. Excitebots: Trick Racing was only available via Club Nintendo in Japan. They had all these physical soundtracks for games available, special edition controllers, they had these three amazing box sets of all the re-released Famicom mini games on the Game Boy Advance. Club Nintendo in Europe would just straight-up offer Nintendo points for you to use on the Wii Shop Channel or DSi Shop, you didn't have to wait for a specific game to become a Club Nintendo reward, You could just get a points card and buy what you want. Every time I'd see what was available either in Europe or Japan, I got a little miffed, not only was the quality of these rewards amazing, but the sheer quantity spit in the face of us Ohioans. We usually have like 6 rewards available at all times, they had like 2 dozen. But then, in January of 2015, Nintendo announced they would be discontinuing Club Nintendo across all regions in June 2015 in North America and September in Europe and Japan. It almost seemed like a very quick decision to kill off Club Nintendo, they were actually utilizing the program much more extensively leading up to its demise. They were offering a promotion where he'd be registered Mario Kart 8 within the first two months of its release, you could choose one of four major Wii U games to download for free. It didn't really make much sense to me because every Wii U owner was already going to buy Mario Kart 8, I think this promotion would've made more sense with a game that wasn't going to be a surefire hit, but hey, I was cool with getting Pikmin 3 for free. They also used it with Smash Brothers for 3DS and Wii U, by registering both 3DS and Wii U versions, You would get a soundtrack CD for free, and get Mewtwo as free DLC early before everybody else. They also offered specific Club Nintendo members the demo for Smash 3DS early as well, and I was one of the lucky few. Like they were actually starting to use Club Nintendo in smart ways, and then a couple months later, they said "We don't need this." I mean the writing was sort of on the wall, with the lackluster Platinum and Gold rewards in 2014, and the Club Nintendo codes themselves were being printed on the inside of the cover art starting around then. They felt less need to advertise them right in your face when you open the game. Club Nintendo kind of hosted a fire sale in the last few months and brought back certain rewards just so members could burn off a lot of the coins they still had. They made Doc Louis' Punch Out available again, loads of digital games were available to buy, a couple of new physical rewards, and Flipnote Studio 3D finally released for free outside of Japan via the service in February 2015 as a thank you to members. And then, one final round of Platinum and Gold rewards were given out, still digital only but some major titles. I own pretty much everything here, though, I think I got Mario Kart 7 and sold the code on eBay. This was a solid end to the program and to this day, I refuse to look at what Europe and Japan got in the final months of Club Nintendo out of fear of jealousy. Club Nintendo in North America was obviously severely worse than Europe and Japan, But they didn't have to launch the program over here. It was free, you got some cool products from time to time, and it created some fun memories for me, so really we couldn't complain that much. Now My Nintendo yeah, that's free to but it's actively worse than the program we got before it. Oh My Nintendo, the one website I refuse to bookmark to this very day. When Club Nintendo was announced to be closing, Nintendo was quick to say they were planning a succeeding rewards program, and by spring 2016, My Nintendo was set up to a resounding Oh God. My Nintendo was primarily focused on Nintendo's mobile apps, it basically launched alongside their first one, Miitomo. It retained the coins from Club Nintendo, but they were separated via platinum in gold varieties. You would get game specific coins like Miitomo coins or Super Mario Run coins, which were just platinum coins earned by completing tasks within the mobile games. Then there's the standard platinum coins, you'd get these by doing tasks related to visiting Nintendo websites or signing up for emails and junk. And then there's the gold coins you get from buying digital games. And there are completely different rewards relating to either gold or platinum coins, this is needlessly complicated compared to Club Nintendo. And the rewards we get here? What? We have an overwhelming amount of phone wallpapers and things to print out. I can get these for free with a Google search. 3DS themes, alright that's fine, and then a bunch of discounts on Wii U and 3DS games Not the full games because God forbid Nintendo give away copies of Dr. Mario Miracle Cure. No, you still have to buy it. You just get a 30% discount now. We can't even get games as rewards with the gold coins, the coins we get from buying things. I totally understand not getting free games with the platinum coins, those you earn for free, but with the gold you just get discounts and they're not even that great of discounts. The highest I've seen is like 40% off. There were only a few digital titles that were available exclusively through my Nintendo. There was Twilight Princess Picross that was available from the start of the service and all you had to do was spend about 1000 platinum coins, which meant this game was completely free. You just had to sign up for a newsletter here and there and play a ton of Miitomo. This is obviously a very cheaply made game, but a cool freebie, I'll give them that. They also offered WarioWare Touched as a downloadable 3DS title. It''s literally the DS game but digitally downloadable through the 3DS. Nothing's different between the digital and original physical releases, but this was the only time Nintendo has ever digitally offered a physical DS game on the 3DS, so I got it because of that. But that's really it, they offered Flipnote Studio 3D for people who didn't snag it on Club Nintendo, They offer digital strategy guides no thank you. Holy sh*t, bingo! I keep forgetting My Nintendo exists, but thankfully the gold coins can now be used to receive in-store credit on these Switch's eShop. But they feel stingy with this stuff, like you have to buy a TON of games just to get like five bucks worth of store credit. I also don't understand how you barely get anything better with the gold coins compared to the Platinum coins, These are the coins I had to spend money to get, and yet there are sometimes less rewards I can redeem compared to rewards for platinum coins, and sometimes stuff like the discounts, I just don't understand how Nintendo thinks this motivates customers to spend money on their stuff. 30% of Twilight Princess HD for coins I got for free, compared to 20% off Sushi Striker for coins I paid to get. So much about My Nintendo's existence makes no sense to me, so I get points for playing Nintendo mobile games, and with those points, I can redeem discounts for games on 3DS and Wii U. I get no points for playing Nintendo's console games. With Club Nintendo, it was easy to understand how both the user and Nintendo benefited from it, You buy the games you give feedback on them, you can get rewards. My Nintendo you use free-to-play mobile games, to then get rewards for outdated Nintendo consoles that aren't really rewards, they're just sort of discounts and PDFs. At least Club Nintendo gave you a reason to want to visit the site, whenever I use the my Nintendo site I just end up asking, "How did I get here?" My Nintendo is easily worse than Club Nintendo in almost every way. So much about this program makes absolutely no sense to me, so I play Nintendo mobile games to get a discount on Star Fox Zero. I don't know if there's any My Nintendo supporters out there, and if there are I don't want to see any of them come up to me and ask "Oh, so did Club Nintendo have bingo cards?" Well, you got me there. ♪ Breakout - 3D Dot Game Heroes ♪
Captions by Jobel
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